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As the éS Game of SKATE has grown, we’ve realized that it’s tough to go everywhere we want to. Each year, we have plans to go to Seattle, for instance, but we’ve never made it North of San Jose, California, despite our plans. Some places just don’t fit into the neat, easy-to-fit tour schedule that we try to make. Well, after Fayetteville, it was great to be able to fit Faith, in Birmingham, Alabama, into the plan for our day off on Saturday, July 22, 2006. It worked out perfectly, actually, as Birmingham is halfway between Fayetteville and Baton Rouge, our last stop on the tour.

Like Cardinal, Faith is one of those skate shops where you know the owners didn’t open it for any reason other than their love for skateboardingâ€”and it shows. With very little notice, Jon and Pete from Faith were able to get a great spot together, under cover, and spread the word. On the day of the event, unfortunately, the éS Game of SKATE crew did something we’d never done before: we showed up late. I’m not making excusesâ€”we were late and it was bad planning on my part.

To start, the great but late dinner we’d had in Fayetteville came back to haunt us as we drove to Atlanta to drop off Justin Eldridge at the airport. Late-night driving is a regular part of the tour, so this was par for the course, but hitting a dog as it ran across the freeway in the rain slowed us down some. After about four hours of sleep, it was back on the road, and of course we were heading the same direction as the storm, so we were slowed down all the way to Birmingham.

We were lucky the spot was covered, but a bunch of skaters did leave before we got there. The 37 skaters who stayed had fun anyway. The final four were Wesley Miller, Pepito Galindo, Bryan Park and Carlo Villaneuve, and in the end it came down to Wesley and Pepito, with Wesley taking the top spot. He will be going to San Diego with his new Boost Mobile i875 phone!

Wesley seemed like a pretty nice guy, despite his trick selection, which ran to multiple shove-it variations, but everyone got tripped out when he tried to kiss Pepito! I know, I know, he was just playing, but there needs to be a comfort level for that sort of stuff which just wasn’t there. Anyway, we wrapped it up at that point, as we did our normal clean-up-and get-on-the-road routineâ€”and split. And don’t think Pepito didn’t get a hard time in the van on the way out of town! Thanks again to Jon and the crew at Faith for holding it down and supporting real skateboarding events.--Mark Waters